HR and Employee Screening Issues Affecting your Business

Notice:

Information contained in this page is of a general informational nature and nothing herein, or on this website, should be construed as legal advice. For advice on questions of law, please consult a qualified attorney for additional guidance.

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Month: January 2019

As a result of the current United States government shutdown, several government services that employers rely on during employment screening may have limited operation or may not be available at all. This will – temporarily – impact A-Check’s ability to complete some screening components.

Unfortunately, we don’t know how long the shutdown will continue, but please be assured we’ll update this notice each Monday throughout the shutdown to keep you informed of ongoing impact. For now, we’d like to share information regarding the following services:

E-Verify: Currently unavailable. When the government shutdown is resolved, A-Check will provide further guidance regarding delayed cases, including the “three day rule.”

As your E-Verify Employer Agent for web services, we are prepared to queue up cases for all eligible employees with a completed Electronic Form I-9 in our system (who have not been submitted to E-Verify) and then auto process them when E-Verify is back up.

For those clients that only utilize our E-Verify service without our Electronic Form I-9, unfortunately, they will need to submit their E-Verify queries once the E-Verify service has been restored after the government shutdown ends.

CBSV (Consent Based Social Verification):This service is currently running uninterrupted. However, we will provide updates should there be any change.

We’re committed to ensuring our systems and services are secure, stable, and regularly maintained to effectively protect your data when doing business with us.

We will be performing scheduled maintenance throughout 2019 and we welcome you to refer to this page for information on upcoming system updates. While we do not anticipate being off-line the entire time of the maintenance window, some or all A-Check Global systems, network and services may become unavailable for a few minutes to the entire duration of the maintenance window. We continue to minimize the impact to processing as much as possible during these maintenance windows.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact your account manager or A-Check Global Client Relations at 877-345-2021.

As your trusted partner, we want to make sure you have access to professional guidance when making employment decisions. To that end, this is our second of a three part series in employment screening compliance. Last month we discussed End Users and Permissible Purpose; this month we’ll quickly cover Disclosures and Authorizations.

Disclosure: End User Must Disclose to Applicant Prior to Requesting a Report

PLEASE NOTE: Because an ever-increasing number of law firms now specialize in class action litigation regarding employer required FCRA Disclosure and Authorization, employers AND consumer reporting agencies should be equally as focused on technical compliance with applicable federal and state laws. Employers should not take short cuts by combining disclosures in the screening process even though “green thinking” and common sense dictate the shrinkage of paper and reduction of steps in the process. If utilizing technology to process Disclosure and Authorization, it is also highly recommended to ensure the electronic signature process utilized is in full compliance with the federal Electronic Signature in Global and National Commerce (ESIGN).

Authorization: Federal Law, State Requirements, and Collection of PII

Employers are required to obtain authorization from the applicant prior to requesting a consumer report for the permissible purpose of employment with only one exception – investigation of wrongdoing.

PLEASE NOTE: Since many organizations utilize the Authorization for a dual purpose in that it not only authorizes the consumer report but it also authorizes the release of information to the consumer reporting agency, class action law firms have taken advantage of this literal interpretation of the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act to successfully sue hundreds of employers for technical violations of the FCRA. If the Authorization form contains language such as “I hereby authorize my past employers and schools to release information about me” or include state required notices such as those in Minnesota, New York City, Oklahoma, or Washington, it will violate the FCRA if combined with the Disclosure.